1. Technical Field
This disclosure generally relates to skin conditioning and protecting items, and more specifically relates to a topical sanitizer, glove and system that conditions and treats the skin on a person's hands.
2. Background Art
Many people must wear gloves for most or all of their workday to protect from environmental challenges including infectious diseases, for example, bacteria, viruses, or other contamination. For example, many doctors, nurses, dentists, clean room operators, food production and food service workers, sanitation workers, chemical plant workers, nuclear plant workers, welders, etc. wear gloves most of the day. Many people are required to change gloves many times a day. The most common type of protective gloves are latex and nitrile disposable gloves.
While latex gloves have been used for decades, they have significant drawbacks. For example, putting on latex gloves can be difficult because the latex has a tendency to bind to and stick to a person's skin. To make gloves easier to don (put on), latex gloves were made that included a cornstarch powder on the interior surface of the glove. The cornstarch powder made the glove much less likely to stick to a person's skin, and therefor greatly enhanced the ease of donning gloves. However, the cornstarch powder can serve as a carrier for allergens in latex, causing greater irritation to a person who has a sensitivity or allergy to latex. Many other powders were developed as alternatives to cornstarch powder for use on gloves.
One significant problem with powdered gloves is they cannot be used in many circumstances. For example, a surgeon cannot wear powdered gloves for fear of the powder dropping into the surgical site. Because there are many situations where powdered gloves are not allowed or are not preferred, various powder-free gloves have been developed.
A problem encountered by many people who wear protective gloves for most of the workday is skin irritation. The gloves trap perspiration on the skin and do not allow air flow that would normally help to evaporate the perspiration, thereby subjecting a person's hands to a damp or wet environment for most of the day. This can lead to skin irritation. The types of skin irritation caused by protective gloves have been well-documented over the years.
In an attempt to create gloves that are more friendly to the hands or a human who wears the gloves, various coatings for gloves have been developed over the years. For example, coatings that include aloe vera, oat starch, colloidal oatmeal, and beta glucan have been developed. Each of these has different properties and different beneficial effects. Note that some of these coatings are in a powder form, while others are powder-free.
Gloves that have coatings that are good for the skin are helpful when wearing the glove, but are not beneficial once the gloves have been removed and discarded. When a person removes a glove, the person typically cleanses his or her hands. When the person needs to put on a new pair of gloves, the person typically cleanses his or her hands again, then puts on the new pair of gloves. For hand-washing, common soaps have harsh detergents that have a tendency to dry out the skin by removing the oil on the skin. The repeated cleansing between glove changes can dry out a person's skin and cause various skin problems. The benefit of wearing gloves that include coatings that are beneficial to the skin may be reduced considerably by the repeated cleansing of the hands during the workday.